Sixty percent of Eee PCs will ship with XP

Asustek Chairman Jonney Shih says the company expects that around sixty percent of its low-cost Eee PC notebooks will ship with Windows XP.

According to Reuters, the XP version of the popular midget notebook should be priced at $390 to $400. That's quite a painful premium compared to the Linux powered version. However, Asus is no stranger to the notebook market and it realizes that the vast majority of consumers will feel at home with a Windows powered machine. The only question is whether these consumers will be willing to cough up the additional $100+ for the product, but Asus seems confident that they will.

Shih also said that Asus is on track to meet its goal of selling 5 million Eee PCs this year. In 2007 they managed to sell 300.000 units and sales have been hampered by Asus' inability to meet huge demand. For example, the Eee PC is still not widely available in Europe, more than a month after its delayed launch.

Several companies are preparing their own Eee PC counterparts and most of them will support XP or Vista, but at the moment the Eee has next to no competition.